Be careful today at Pinckney School: Akina Kashiwaya will be lurking in the shadows.

The sixth-grader plans to dress this afternoon in a Halloween costume that is part nasty witch and part howling feline.

“I’m a cat, but a ‘witch cat’ that’s kind of wicked,” Kashiwaya said.

She’ll join hundreds of other Pinckney students in the annual costume parade to Lawrence Memorial Hospital, one of the school’s business partners. Hospital staff and patients will be treated to their pageantry.

But not all elementary schoolchildren in the Lawrence district will get to disguise themselves. Prairie Park and Wakarusa Valley schools don’t allow students to dress in costumes during the school day. Both schools have evening events for children to appear in costume.

Dana Wingert, the parent of a child at Wakarusa Valley, said she’d like to see in-school Halloween activities become uniform across the district.

“If it’s right for any of them to do it, it’s right for all of them,” she said.

Donna Black, principal at Wakarusa Valley, said the parent-teacher organization was sponsoring a trick-or-treating event this evening in the school’s parking lot. It fills a void for students who have difficulty trick-or-treating in rural areas of Douglas County.

At Wakarusa Valley, she said, there isn’t a groundswell of support for replacing the school’s annual recognition of the fall harvest season with an in-school costume parade and candy extravaganza.

“I’m sure the kids would love that,” she said. “I’m not sure the parents would.”

Supt. Randy Weseman said the district didn’t have a comprehensive Halloween policy. The day’s activities must remain secular, but details of how that is accomplished are left to principals at the district’s 18 elementary schools.

“Halloween isn’t a national holiday,” Weseman said. “The focus of our schools is on academic achievement.”

Wayne Kruse, a Quail Run School teacher and president of Lawrence Education Assn., the union that represents the district’s educators, said he didn’t think Halloween activities interfered with learning.

“I hear the opposite,” he said. “Schools that don’t do it, (teachers) wish they could do it.”

Many of the district’s elementary schools  Schwegler, Woodlawn, Hillcrest, Broken Arrow and Sunset Hill, for example  have classroom parties to celebrate Halloween.

Schwegler Principal David Theilen said there were limits to the costume mania.

“We only want rated-G stuff,” he said.

To eliminate Halloween traditions would be scary, Sunset Hill sixth-grader Zach Hill said.

“Wouldn’t do that,” said Hill, who will be wearing a costume today that brings together a red wig, huge shirt, tight pants and dress shoes.

And don’t even think of messing with Pinckney’s parade.

“I’ve done it since I came here,” Kashiwaya said.

After all, she might put a spell on you.